Kickstarting My Animus

As if it weren't apparent, I failed miserably at following through with the proclamation that I'd write for this more frequently. Right, so here I am, again, back from the dead, now the end of my Fall semester. And as always, I do like writing, very much. In fact, I will leave it at that . . .

I like writing. There shall be writing. I shall write. I shan't cease to like the contraction "shan't."

Adios.
]
"I am a man, cut from the know."

The Art Critic

With the last of the wine came the final goodbyes, as the crowd dissipated into the foggy evening. Faint calls of far-off birds echoed through the auditorium of the world, each tone crawling higher and higher until they finally shattered the sky. Standing interlocked in the shower of the multifaceted and prismatic shards, the two lovers bled silently, the red trails running down their faces and painting the picture of perfect, Greek tragedy.

"A bit too Post-Impressionistic, if you ask me," critiqued the voice with no body, no face; truly forever, the sound is accompanied in sole part with a single blackened pair of eyes. "Don't be too hasty, however, to eliminate the qualities of that more slovenly and barbaric movement, of course. Granted, no one ever told Picasso he should take up writing, nor did anyone tell T.S. Eliot that his instrument shall henceforth be transformed into the paintbrush."

We knew what it all meant, in the end. Or so they told us, anyway, long afterward.

As the rain fell like a cold cleanser poured down the drain of our lives, the party went on and on well into the next and next day. The journeying sage still speaks of that one time when the punch was spilt across the floor, all mouths crooked into red-tainted smiles and laughs glistened against the haze like falling stars. After the unveiling of the dismembered High Roman statuettes came up the main course of the meal, a thousand headless souls on silver platters giggling from the pokes of the steel skewers. They all ate, against the triple, iridescent windows lining the far wall, while their saviour broke the bread in the name of gracious slaughter to commence tomorrow.

"Still, we move from period to period claiming progress, still two steps forward preceding and proceeding a single one along the negative," chuckled the reverberating, bass-tone voice, crouched in the corner of a timeless plane, shifting from one foot to the other. "Was Dadaism a progression from Surrealism mixed with a slight bit too much Abstract Expressionism? Or an excuse to let it all loose with one quick snip to the line that separated tactless nonsense from subconscious dreamscapes?"

We knew what it all meant, in the end. Or so they told us, anyway, long afterward.

The boy hollered as he ran, waving the crimson banner of his clan, screeching a horrid tale of an angel clad in black cloak and robe, bearing a magnificently sharpened scythe that tore through the night. It was not long before you could find him huddled in a padded cell, strapped to himself like a long-forgotten doll imprisoned in a house of virgin white. Drugs and doctors never did cure the twitch in his reddened eye nor the drool leaking forth from his chapped lips, but they say he died peacefully inflated like a balloon floating by formaldehyde and sodium pentathol.

"The American Romanticists of the late Nineteenth always did depict nature so gigantic and humanity so miniscule, I wonder what they would paint today?" questioned that omnipresent whisper trapt in the astral attic of mankind, perched on a marble pedestal carved like a triumphal arch. "Would Cole and Church be so rapt by trees if they saw the pointed tower in Seattle or the gilt bridge in California?"

We knew what it all meant, in the end. Or so they told us, anyway, long afterward.

I heard the lyrics pass by my ears one wintry Sunday, the song that went like . . .

"Impart upon me Thine infinity and wisdom,
So that I may see Thee in perfect glory,
One instant before perishing devestated,
By the Holy Trinity naked clear in bronze etched frame.

"Seven days until Thy next Age,
In the meantime, He rests in the bed of Earth,
Breath granting both Life and Death,
In with the Good, out with the Bad.

"Seven signs embossed in my human soul,
Seven ways to Fall, seven ways to Fly,
Seven symbols spelling out Thy Will,
And seven sacred, cracked tablets ground to dust.

"Hear My voice, children, hear My prayer,
My pleading to set you free from Hell,
Your decision to make on your own,
Whether you listen when all is said,
And all is done."

I knew what it all meant, in the end. Or so he told me, anyway, long afterward.

The bell rang thrice over the loud and bustling, dirtied city populated by busy, preoccupied citizens. It was at the end of that sound that the boy cracked and died in that underfunded asylum. Stepping onto the eastern shores of the Atlantic, the angel he saw that day gripped his weapon of choice tight and smirked and never stopped. When the rays of red dusk hit the earthen world later on, there was much lacking in the English language for what the peeking moon saw.

"Grecoroman was popular -- too popular, really, if you ask me. The Rennaisance wasted its years suckling the teat of Greece, which was a trend started by the Romanesque fools. Then, Neoclassicism decided that the ancient ruins of Rome weren't as of yet done being a well of easily plagiarised wealth. Oh, one mustn't forget the Revival years of the early eighteen hundreds, don't get me started there. Jefferson was a sham," admonished the oscillating tones that bounced between the high and low points in human history, a neverending sine curve wrapped around the universe. "For all the adoration and adolation the Gothic period was prone to receive, nobody ever did stop to read the message etched in those high-towered cathedrals above the lintels of those decorative, heavy doors, right on so many tympanums. Oh, well."

They knew what it all meant, in the end.

An Ode to Odes

All the passion, season for the artistic fashion,
Poetry from the soul, brewed to sear like red-hot coal,
Contrived rhyme, recipe to shine, fine line between original and predefined.

Marks on the wall, writing on the pall,
Eyes closed, feel the stale air grow heated,
Mouth closed, taste the rancid odour lilt across your nose,
Driven to succeed, we dance like how we're shown,
We move like how we're taught,
We teach like how we learned,
Deviate only to reciprocate the same old thing.

It's all been done, honey, it's all been said,
Autumn-eyed angel with hair like the trees,
Brown, red, gold and black in the dark,
It's what was said, darling, it's what was done,
Don't call me sweetheart, don't insult me to my face.

Time to time, sitting still is the way to go,
Change the flow by stopping the drain,
Burn down the pillars of your own reality,
Grasp the fleeting glimpses of sanity,
And be happy that you're not alone.

It's in the recipe, sweet thing, it's carved in stone,
With all your irredescent qualities and diamond cut mind,
Your destiny is to outshine the rest of humankind,
It's who you find alongside, baby, it's not your fault.

Too green to see how to be comfortable in red robes,
Dressed to serve, prim and proper and inbred,
Distorted through the wine glass filled to the brim,
Staring glassy-eyed across the room, it may come clear,
But, more than likely, you know you won't find him, again.

She talked a lot, in that soft voice of her's,
She said a lot, in that whimsically humorous way of her's,
"Don't look so sad, it only leads to latent anger,
When you cry, it's not because life is terrible,
It's all those specks of reality buried in your soul."

"Mind if I slip out of this mind of mine,
It's too tight to keep in this little, white skull,"
So said Death to the Angel of Destruction,
Perched on the scarecrow's shoulder, the vulture smiled.

Time to time, the way to go is to let it all flow,
Blood-red rivers snake through the mountainous mindscape,
While electricity shoots across all the purple-red clouds,
And sleep may never come, for the rest of your life,
Don't fret, child, it's just that the difference between disappears,
Conscious and subconscious, awakened and enlightened,
Underneath that tree, leaves will stick in your hair.

Night drop over day-glow, spidery stars,
Put out like cigarettes in the drizzle of Chicago,
Lukewarm coffee-flavoured lips parted to kiss cynicism,
Alleyways pouring out that fashionable apathy,
And, around and around, goes the merry-go-round,
Empty and rusted, the deathless eyes of the steel horses glint.

A miniature homage of everything stood for before,
The bonfire burns on and on, contained by piles of bones,
Fueled by questions that start with tears,
And the separation between love and happiness,
Cleaved in half and laid out to rot in the desert sun,
Picked clean and brought to be kindle.

It's all been writ, princess, it's all been predicted,
A life given for the life of living death,
Your flesh, so supple, drawn taunt, ivory shined orange,
Relax, they say, so the stress may dissipate,
Come now, angel, it's time to ascend to heaven.

Wings flutter and the sound of liquid on soil,
A knife drawn, a mouth agape, an ear pierced,
Blind and deaf, we move about unchanged by it,
Muted by years of being worn thin by ridicule,
"Don't be so sad, so afraid, so childish,
Grow up, it's time to celebrate the world,
Brought to and borne by ingrates,
This planet will soon die,
And you complain, still,
And you complain, still."

Time to time, sitting still is the way to go,
Change the flow by stopping the drain,
Burn down the pillars of your own reality,
Grasp the fleeting glimpses of sanity,
And be happy that you're not alone.